Chicago’s Creative Capital

SAIC and Chicago flow together. The city grounds and inspires the school’s artists and designers. In turn, their impact reverberates throughout Chicago and beyond.

“Drawing pictures of the world was the reason I came to Chicago,” says Ware (SAIC 1991–93, HON 2019). “It seemed to me to be the city of real, rough life." Chris Ware made history when he exhibited his comics at the Whitney Biennial in 2002.

It’s impossible to understand Associate Professor Maria Gaspar without understanding where she grew up––Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, where she learned that there are many ways to be an artist. What unites all of her work is a commitment to investigating the relationship between power and place.

Sonja Henderson's (BFA 1992) Chicago studio serves as a community hub. She weaves healing and care into her social practice, which grew even more expansive when she became artist-in-residence at SAIC’s community partnership with Homan Square.

Artist and best-selling author of The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger (BFA 1985) finds endless inspiration in Chicago's rich architecture and storied history.

José Lerma, associate professor in SAIC’s Painting and Drawing Department, combines politics and humor in his work. Among his favorite Chicago spots: the Art Institute of Chicago museum, where he has been making a drawing based on every painting in the old wing. "There’s no frames dividing anything. It’s just one giant painting that blends into the next, into the next."

Sherwin Ovid (BFA 2007) moved to Chicago from Texas to study at SAIC and now teaches at Northwestern University. He still gravitates to spots that he loved as an undergrad, among them Gramaphone Records—a record store doubling as a community hub—and the Afro-Latin cultural center Segundo Ruiz Belvis, where he learned about Bomba.

For more than 150 years, SAIC’s artists and designers have been inspired by the wonders and complexities of living here. Alums Teresita Carson (BFA 2018), Anthony Sims (MFA 2022), and Bun Stout (MFA 2020), Associate Professor Adam J. Greteman, and Professor Emerita Anne Wilson talked to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago magazine about how the city has rooted and helped grow their work.

SAIC’s journey began in this Beaux-Arts building, now a world-renowned museum exhibiting 5,000 years of history.

Once upon a time Chicago’s City Hall, this historic building currently accommodates SAIC facilities.

A former elite athletic club, this Chicago landmark now serves SAIC students as a learning space.

Designed by the legendary Mies van der Rohe, this modernist masterpiece houses SAIC instructional shops and other facilities.

Richly ornamented, this historic building is the current home of SAIC's Architecture and Interior Architecture departments.

An early Chicago School architectural icon, Jones Hall once neighbored the "world's busiest corner" and now provides an inspiring space for the SAIC community.